Siachen and water

There is no point in sitting back and twiddling our thumbs. The water crisis is an acute one.

Our problems sometimes seem insurmountable; we wonder if they can ever be solved and if so, how this will happen. The solutions are out there; we only need to look more carefully and resolve the political issues which make such situations more complex and as a result, harder to solve. The water crisis we face in our country, with less and less pouring down the Indus and causing massive agricultural losses as well as land erosion, notably in Sindh, is a problem we are all familiar with. The other consequences of severe water shortages are also with us and the UN, among other bodies, has made rather frightening predictions that Pakistan will, within a few years be a country desperately short of water, with fewer and fewer unpolluted resources left to meet the drinking water needs of people.

There is no point in sitting back and twiddling our thumbs. The crisis is an acute one. We can only then hope that the prime minister — once he gets past the current crisis — will take a serious look at a letter written to him by the Islamabad-based Sustainable Policy Development Institute. The NGO has quoted experts from India, who at conferences held at various capitals around the world, have made a series of suggestions to improve the volume of water in the Indus. The key suggestion in this regard involves the demilitarisation of the Siachen glacier and also other glacial areas surrounding it. Battles for control of the strategically significant area have been fought intermittently between Pakistan and India since 1984. Experts believe, troop presence hampers water flow downstream into rivers and contributes to the shortage crisis.

A suggestion for the setting up of an Indus Water Commission, involving representatives from both countries, has also been put forward by the experts. These possible measures all need to be considered. The demilitarisation of Siachen would also ease tensions between the two nations and killing several birds with one stone is always a good idea.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 13^th, 2012.